By Virginia Winder
A death-bed request led Te Atiawa chief Wiremu Kingi Te Rangitāke to protect a controversial piece of Taranaki land, known as the Pekapeka Block.
As his father, Te Rere-ta-whangawhanga, lay dying, he reached out to his son and made him promise never to sell Te Atiawa's tribal land in Taranaki.
His final wish and Te Rangitāke's fighting efforts were in vain. The land, where the township of Waitara has been built, was sold in what historians and Māori still see as a questionable transaction.
Victoria University's Peter Adds says the Pekapeka Block is hugely significant in the nation's history.
Original dispute
"It's the place where the New Zealand Wars started," says Adds, a senior lecturer at the university's School of Māori Studies (Te Kawa a Maui).
"It's the place where the original dispute arose and it was a dispute about the purchase of that land by the Crown from Te Atiawa," he says. "The dispute is whether (Te Atiawa man) Teira had the right to sell that land in the first place when it was recognised that Wiremu Kingi was the paramount chief of the tribe."
The land in question is on the south side of the Waitara River, and encompasses about 600 acres (about 243 hectares), says Adds, of Te Atiawa descent.
Source of Conflict: The Pekapeka Block from W.I. Grayling's "The War in Taranaki", 1862.
Te Rangitāke, who became the tribe's paramount chief after his father's death, was determined to honour the old man's last appeal. So, in 1847, he returned to Taranaki with about 600 members of his tribe.
Before that, father and son had been part of the heke, or migration, of Te Atiawa people to Wellington and the top of the South Island. Both men had also signed the Treaty of Waitangi, brought around by Crown representative Henry Williams, on 23 May 1840.
Te Rangitāke returns to Taranaki
Back in Waitara, Te Rangitāke and his people settled on the Pekapeka Block, Adds says.
"The Government at the time was trying to convince them to move to the north bank, but they chose, quite deliberately, to live on the south bank, which was more their traditional lands.
"He lived there for a number of years and did well there, economically."
Throughout the 1850s, the Te Atiawa people grew fruit and vegetables, which they sold to New Plymouth Company settlers in the fledgling city. They even transported some of the goods in trading boats, moving up and down the Taranaki coast.
"The Māori communities were living all around New Plymouth and not letting them (the settlers) out.
Māori Land League
"During the 1850s, Māori people were becoming very worried about land alienation, generally. Their response to that was the formation of the Māori Land League, which according to the media, was a covert organisation designed to obstruct the selling of Māori land to Europeans."
He says Te Rangitāke was portrayed as the leader of that organisation.
"He was vilified for that by Pakeha people. The settlers were wanting to get out into the land and to them this guy appeared to be preventing all that and so they had reason not to like him."
There were also tensions among Te Atiawa people, with some tribal people selling land, but this was not backed by Te Rangitāke. "That created an internal struggle between sellers and non-sellers. This tended to be aligned through hapu (sub-tribe). Some hapu sold, some didn't."
"Selling" the land
One of the hapu was Ngati Rahiri, which Te Teira (or Taylor) belonged to.
The clash between Te Teira and Te Rangitāke arose over love. "They had an argument about a marriage that Kingi had vetoed," Adds says. "It was an arranged marriage to cement land ties. Kingi (as paramount chief) said 'no' and Teira was annoyed and to get back at him, offered his land for sale to the chief crown purchasing agent, a guy called Donald McLean."
McLean, whose name graces the main street of Waitara, and Governor of the day, Thomas Gore Browne, accepted Te Teira's offer. "But with the full knowledge that Kingi was the paramount chief and Teira did not have the rights there."
"Kingi of course refused."
Ignoring his stance, New Plymouth Company surveyors, led by Frederic Carrington, were sent in to chart the land.
"The tribal stories are that every night after the surveyors had finished their work, the children and old women (of Te Atiawa) would go and pull out the survey pegs," Adds says.
Declaration of war
After a few months of this annoying behaviour, Government officials from New Plymouth got frustrated and wrote another letter to Te Rangitāke in both Māori and English. "The Māori version of which virtually translates into a declaration of war, saying that if they (Te Rangitāke's people) don't get off the land, the troops will be brought in and they will be fired upon."
On 17 March 1860, that's exactly what happened.
That day, Te Rangitāke and about 80 warriors quickly constructed Te Kohia, known as the L-pā, on the western side of the Pekapeka Block above Waitara. They occupied the pā and refused to budge. Shots were fired.
Battles begin
The result - the New Zealand Land Wars had begun.
For two days Colonel Charles Gold and his Imperial troops tried to overthrow the pā, but failed.
Te Kohia Pā: Detail of a sketch by Lieutenant Fred Mold R.E.
In The New Zealand Wars, by James Belich, he describes why the L-pā was such a success: "Its anti-artillery bunkers and covered trenches effectually protected its garrison from cannon and small-arms fire. Nearly 500 troops poured in a heavy fire all day from as near as 50 yards. Two 24-pounder howitzers fired 200 rounds, 'every shot through the place', from close range, but the Māoris(sic) had no one killed."
And because the pā was so quick to put up - it took just one night - Te Rangitāke and his men had no qualms in leaving it. That's what they did on the night of 17 and 18 March, leaving British troops shooting at an empty pā.
Adds says the war that began on that day, eventually drew in support from other Taranaki tribes along with warriors from the Māori King movement at Tainui. "All galvanised by the land issue. This was armed resistance to Māori land alienation.
"The war lasted a year and Te Atiawa lost, because the Crown had the ability to ship out soldiers from Australia. So, the Māori were outnumbered and outgunned."
In 1863, the Government drew up two pieces of legislation that had a major effect on Māori land.
Rebels and confiscations
The first was the New Zealand Settlement Act, and the second was the Suppression of Rebellion Act.
"What these two acts allowed was for Māori to be punished for being in rebellion by the confiscation of all their land," Adds says.
To this day, Te Atiawa people have disagreed with the claims they were in rebellion. "Our point of view was we were attacked by an aggressive military and in fact we were just defending house and home. How you construe rebellion from that, only the Crown knows."
As a result, 1.2 million acres (about 485,000 hectares) of Taranaki land was eventually confiscated. The Pekapeka Block was part of that.
Adds says that over time that land was handed out to European settlers and soldiers for taking part in the fighting.
Handing out the land
Then in 1866, Governor George Grey introduced the Compensation Court. "Which had the job of working out who had been a rebel and who had been loyal," Adds says.
"The idea was that the loyals would receive a Crown grant to a piece of land somewhere and the rebels would be rounded up and placed on land especially reserved for them." The reserve land amounted to 200,000 acres (80,940 hectares), scattered throughout mostly rural Taranaki in small blocks.
In reality, Māori were not allowed to live on the reserve land. "They were forced to lease it to Pakeha farmers, but were not allowed to collect the rent on it."
The rental was set at 4-5% of the then market value of the land, which is known as a peppercorn rate.
"The rentals were ridiculously low," Adds says. "And it remained like that until 1975 at the same rate."
Māori have no say
On top of that, Māori were not allowed to administer their own land. "They (the Crown) said 'Māori don't know anything about money so we will give the money to the Native Trustee to administer on their behalf, which was the Public Trust office in those days."
By 1900, the Public Trust had sold about half of that land. "Without any reference to Māori."
The remaining 100,000 acres (40,470 hectares) are now administered by the Parininihi ki Waitotara Incorporation (PKW).
The Pekapeka Block is not part of that reserve land. This was confiscated and then divided.
Waitara endowments' debate
"It was cut up and bits of it were given to the Waitara Borough Council and the Taranaki Harbours Board as endowments (gifts) and leased out so they could create money for those organisations," Adds says.
The endowments concern about 179.71 hectares (442 acres) of land in the Waitara township. Half of this land is within the Pekapeka Block.
When local government nationwide was given a makeover in 1989, the endowments were transferred to the New Plymouth District Council.
"What that meant for Te Atiawa was that because that land was in private hands, i.e. the New Plymouth District Council, it was not available for return by way of Treaty settlement. That's the issue with that land today," Adds says.
On 12 August 2003, the New Plymouth District Council voted 13-3 to return the leasehold land to the people of Te Atiawa. Councillor Sherril George abstained from voting.
However, on 30 March 2004, the council made a surprise decision to sell the land to the Government. A condition of the sale is that the Crown must include it as part of its Treaty of Waitangi settlement with Te Atiawa.
The councillors voted 13-4 in favour of the new plan.
For - Mayor Peter Tennent, Lynn Bublitz, Heather Dodunski, Elaine Gill, Phil Quinney, Howie Tamati, Jed Rowlands, Maurice Betts, Michael Merrick, Alison Rumball, Alex Matheson, Clive Pryme and Barry Finch.
Against - Kevin O'Neill, Sherril George, Pam Street and Gay Andrews.